Virtual Gallery | March 2021
Hey Friends!
In light of this new unknown living, we are all in now, and in an effort to try and keep some consistency in my life, I’m taking my weekly residency into the Virtual Gallery! Every week I will have a new virtual friend join me and Stephanie via the interwebs, and this time at a more reasonable time frame of 8:30pm to 10pm. For those who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Stephanie Marlar, you have no idea how lucky you are about to become!! She’s the ringleader, the hero, the rebel, and the sass to every gallery show I do and she’s also a helluva bartender. She’ll be my copilot on these shows as long as her country ass internet works!
So here's how it's gonna work: Contributions = a number that reflects the combined amount of what you would pay at the door + Stephanie’s Tip Jars. Right now, we’re using RSVPify to sell General Admission tickets for the low, low price of $7. You’ll notice at check-out that there is an option to add a donation to your GA ticket. Each week, the contributions will be shared between my guest, our virtual bartender Stephanie, and me. After your ticket is purchased, you will receive an email with instructions on how to access the Virtual Gallery via ZOOM. Here you will get to see, chat, and listen to all your favorite songs by me and my friends! We are asking for you not share the access link with others. This is one of the many ways we are trying to avoid losing our homes over the next few months and to be able to keep you entertained during these uncertain times!
I’ll also share the info and etiquette tips of these new spaces. Much like the Continental Gallery, this is still a live room in which we all share it together. So for example, if you un-mute yourself and speak, you will be interrupting the show for every single person watching! We’ll also include tips on how to optimize your viewing experience, and any other details you'll need in order to log-in and enjoy the show. This platform we’re using is free to sign up for, AND there is also an option to watch within your browser in case you can’t download the app. We will also welcome your feedback and know we will be working out the kinks as best as possible. We want to make this the best experience we can.
Purchase a Virtual Gallery Pass to attend all four weeks for just $25!
Here’s our very real, virtual schedule:
Thursday, March 4th - Curtis McMurtry
Curtis McMurtry is a singer-songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist from Austin, TX. Influenced by Fiona Apple, Billy Strayhorn and Tom Waits, Curtis' music combines sinister lyrics with sophisticated orchestration. His first solo album Respectable Enemy was released in August 2014, and drew comparisons to Calexico and John Fullbright. His sophomore album The Hornet's Nest was released in 2017, and his latest record, Toothless Messiah is due out February 5th 2021. Curtis' music has been featured on NPR's Weekend Edition, and his song "Wrong Inflection" was included in the soundtrack for comedian Tig Notaro's Amazon Prime series One Mississippi.
Curtis was born and raised in Austin, Texas and grew up surrounded by local musicians from multiple genres. He studied music composition and ethnomusicology in college, primarily writing contemporary chamber music for banjo and strings. After graduation, Curtis moved to Nashville to sharpen his songwriting by co-writing with elder statesmen including Fred Koller and Guy Clark. He has since moved back to Austin where he performs as a trio with cellist Diana Burgess (of Mother Falcon) and upright bassist Taylor Turner (of Lolita Lynne) . Curtis' goal in songwriting and composition has been to integrate the Classical and Jazz orchestration techniques he learned in college with the lyric-driven, Texas singer-songwriter style he absorbed growing up.
"Two things about McMurtry up front: Nobody in Austin is doing anything quite like his music right now, and his talent as a lyricist is well above the vast majority of young songwriters in town." - Peter Blackstock, Austin360com
"Backed by a stand-up bass, cello and occasionally a horn section, the 24-year-old McMurtry epitomizes the catch-all nature of Americana" - Rollingstone.com
"The second album by McMurtry shows its conceptual ambition in the way it coheres, exploring a range of emotions through a variety of personae. From the vulnerable innocence of the opening “Hard Blue Stones” through the corpse picked clean on the closing “Silver World,” the 13-song cycle shimmers through the desires and flaws of a shared humanity. ." - Don McLeese, No Depression
Thursday, March 11th - Tawny Ellis
Tawny is known for her thought provoking lyrics and musical composition. Her work has a distinctive quality rooted in sweet Southern folk indicative of Patsy Cline and Emmylou Harris but most noteworthy, Ellis' voice: “It's the sort of voice one could make a meal of, in the vein of Neko Case or Ray LaMontagne, -- not to mention country singers from years, if not ages, past” (Guitar World Magazine).
Singing since childhood, Ellis’ sultry sound and complicated rhythms come from experience. Although a Savannah, GA native, Ellis traveled across America due to her nomadic childhood before landing in Southern California where she meets longtime collaborator Gio Loria, who along with Ellis brings her lush melodies and lyrical storytelling to audiences around the world. With music tours in North America and Europe and recording in studios in New Orleans and France, Ellis’ life on the road brings adventure and reward. Ellis recorded at historical FAME studios in Muscle Shoals Alabama setting down a four track EP, Ghosts Of The Low Country.
Thursday, March 18th - Erika Wennerstrom
There's something somewhat frightening, yet utterly liberating when leaving the confines of a successful band to venture solo — especially a band whose latest record was called "effortlessly brilliant" by critics. But, such is the case with Erika Wennerstrom who is taking a break from her Austin-based rock band, Heartless Bastards, to deliver her solo debut Sweet Unknown.
"It was a really freeing experience," reveals the singer/songwriter/guitarist. "I found my strength in my vulnerability as an artist, and really, just as a person. It kind of forced me to allow myself to be a little more exposed and stand on my own two feet. I feel like I've grown a lot creatively and personally."
Thursday, March 25th - Mary Gauthier
Every day. Every single day, which means some days are better and some much worse. Every day, on average, twenty-two veterans commit suicide. Every day. That number does not include drug overdoses or car wrecks or any of the more inventive ways somebody might less obviously choose to die. It seems trivial to suggest those lives might be saved — healed, even — by a song. By the process of writing a song. And yet. And yet there is nothing trivial about Mary Gauthier's tenth album, Rifles & Rosary Beads (Thirty Tigers), all eleven songs co-written with and for wounded veterans. Eleven of the nearly four hundred songs that highly accomplished songwriters have co-written as part of the five-year-old SongwritingWith:Soldiers program. Participants of the program have shared that the experience of songwriting was life changing for them, some even said life saving. Something about writing that song — telling that story — is healing. What program co-founder Smith calls post-traumaticgrowth. Gauthier's first nine albums presented extraordinary confessional songs, deeply personal, profoundly emotional pieces ranging from “I Drink,” a blunt accounting of addiction, to “March 11, 1962,” the day she was born — and relinquished to an orphanage — to “Worthy,” in which the singer finally understands she is deserving of love. Maybe that's where the confessional song cycle ends, for she has midwifed these eleven new songs in careful collaboration with other souls whose struggle is urgent, immediate, and palpable. And none are about her. Each song on Rifles & Rosary Beads is a gut punch: deceptively simple and emotionally complex. From the opening “Soldiering On” (“What saves you in the battle/Can kill you at home”) to “Bullet Holes in the Sky” (“They thank me for my service/And wave their little flags/They genuflect on Sundays/And yes, they'd send us back”), while “Iraq” depicts the helpless horror of a female military mechanic being dehumanized and sexually harassed by fellow soldiers. Darrell Scott, returning from one of Smith's first retreats, called and told Mary she needed to participate. “I felt unqualified,” she says. “I didn't know anything about the military, I was terrified of fucking it up. I didn't feel I knew how to be in the presence of that much trauma without being afraid. But Darrell knew I could do it. Turns out, I was able to sit with the veterans with a sense of calmness and help them articulate their suffering without fear. I was shocked by that. And I took to it.” It has become a calling. “My job as a songwriter is to find that thing a soul needs to say,” Mary says. “Each retreat brings together a dozen or so soldiers and four songwriters, three songs each in two days. We don't have a choice. We have to stay focused, listen carefully, and make sure every veteran gets their own song. And we always do.” “None of the veterans are artists. They don't write songs, they don't know that songs can be used to move trauma. Their understanding of song doesn't include that. For me it's been the whole damn deal. Songwriting saved me. It's what I think the best songs do, help articulate the ineffable, make the invisible visible, creating resonance, so that people, (including the songwriter) don’t feel alone.” The impact of these songs becomes visible quickly, unexpectedly. Featured in the TV series “Nashville,” the Bluebird Cafe now prospers as a tourist destination. The room fills twice a night with people thrilled to be in the presence of real live Nashville songwriters. Who, in turn, are thrilled to be in the presence of a paying audience that can do nothing to advance their careers, save give a genuine response to their songs. The gentleman at the next table has handsome white hair and a hundred-dollar casual shirt, and almost certainly had no idea who Mary Gauthier was, nor what her songs might be about, when he came out of the sunlight into the darkened listening room. He knows, now. Thick, manicured fingers cover his face, trying to catch his slow tears. His wife sits close, watches carefully, but knows better than to touch him. He is not alone in that small audience. Every day we are touched by the veterans in our lives, whether we know it or not. Every single day. Even if it's only the guy on Main Street, in the wheelchair, with the flag. Every single day. And, yes, a song may be the answer. “Because the results are so dramatic, this could work for other traumas,” Mary says. “Trauma is the epidemic. You say opioid, I say trauma epidemic. As an addict, I know addiction is self-medication because of suffering, and beneath that pain is always trauma. Underneath so much of the problems in the world is trauma, it's the central issue humanity is dealing with. We've found something powerful here, that brings hope to people who are hurting. So they are truly seen, and know they are not alone.”